Sevencyclopaedia - C

CYGNUS ALPHA

Federation penal colony to which convicts from Earth and possibly elsewhere were sent. The London made the journey from Earth in eight months" ship time, according to Raiker. The small population was ruled by Vargas with Kara as his high priestess. Some species of small animal, probably a rat, lived on Cygnus Alpha, since the roast corpse of one was seen to be eaten by Laran. Throughout the course of the episode, Cygnus Alpha was never shown in daylight.

Vargas told Blake that the first settlers on Cygnus Alpha were fifty convicts sent by the Federation. They struggled to survive, but found their efforts threatened by later shiploads of prisoners. Vargas" great-great-grandfather, who came in on the first shipload, then founded an authoritarian religion to hold the community together. This dates the religion's founding back about 100-150 years. Vargas also stated that he had never ruled more than five hundred people at any one time. He also described human souls as the only currency on the planet.

Of the dozen or so followers seen only one, Kara, was female.

The star Alpha Cygni, also known as Deneb, is some 1,600 light years from Earth. It is catalogued as an A2 star, and as such is unlikely to have a planetary system.

CYGNUS XL

A black hole, and the final star in the sequence that revealed the location of Belkov's missing feldon crystals. Locking the panels of Orbiter onto Cygnus XL pulled the ship towards the black hole.

Cygnus X-1, a powerful X-ray source with a supergiant companion, is a possible black hole in the constellation of Cygnus.

CYNRA

Seen on the same star chart as Aristo on the Liberator's flight deck.

CYPHER MACHINES

Used by the Federation (and presumably others) to transmit coded messages, they were a target of Blake's on several occasions. In Seek-Locate-Destroy Blake snatched a cypher machine from the Federation's communications centre on Centero, later Servalan says she must tell Central Security to change the code system after learning that Blake stole the cypher machine on Centero.. In Bounty, Blake tells Sarkoff how he learned of the Lindor Strategy after capturing a cypher machine. In Killer, Avon and Vila were sent down to Fosforon to acquire a TP-crystal to allow Blake to decipher pulse-coded A-line messages.

Among coded messages appearing in the series, Travis sent Blake a summons to Exbar in a code destandardised 50 years previously. In the same episode (Hostage), Avon contacted Servalan on Top Priority General Code 107, and Servalan received a call from Councillor Joban on Priority Code 9.

The trouble with capturing cypher machines was that they became useless once the codes had been changed. Travis could have had the codes altered within hours of Blake's attack on Centero, but held back to lure Blake back with news of Cally's capture. Blake told Sarkoff that the codes were changed after he learned of the Lindor Strategy. In Voice from the Past he used the changing of codes and the sense of futility it generated to reinforce his commitment to LeGrand's bloodless coup.

It is also worth noting that Orac could intercept and decode transmissions, as it did with Travis" message to Blake. This implies unspecified limits to Orac's capabilities: if it really could access any information Blake required, there would have been no need to take risks capturing cypher machines.

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